Monday, June 15, 2009

Where you live

Chickadee at A Familiar Path has a post today about why you love where you live, and as I was reading the things people wrote about their home states, I was thinking about all the places I've lived.

I was born in Washington DC (yes, I'm one of a very few people who can say I'm a DC native). My family moved to California (outside LA) until I was three, then moved to New Jersey, which was where my parents' families were. We lived at the Jersey shore—for a while a few miles inland, then in my teen years we were two blocks from the beach—until I got married and left home. That's still one of my favorite places to visit—I'm definitely a beach girl at heart. But there's something about the New Jersey beaches that's especially welcoming. They smell different, the sand is different, they just feel right. The best part of visiting is when you start to get close to the beach and you roll down the car windows and get that first big breath of salty, humid air. Ahhh! A wave of calm washes over me just thinking about it!

But not only do I miss the beach, the food calls us home occasionally. There's no place on earth to find better pizza, and do any of you non-New-Jersey-ites know what a crumb cake is? And pork roll. Oh, my word. Throw the bacon in the trash and give me a pork roll sandwich on a real hard roll. When we go home for a visit, we spend $75 on great food to bring home—there's just nothing like it.

Since I left New Jersey, I've lived in North Carolina, Tennessee, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, and moved 15 times in 25 years. But there's something about New Jersey that will always feel like home.

What about you? Where do you call home, and what do you love about it?

4 comments:

Pork Roll and pizza and Jersey tomatoes -- and the smell of the boardwalk and the salt marshes. So many wonderful Jersey-exclusive experiences! I feel the same way that you do, my cousin. I love where I live now with my husband and family, but Jersey will always be its own special kind of Home to me.

I don't even know what to call home. I like South Carolina the best but I've never even lived there:) They have lots of drive-thru coffee places in Greenville. I keep telling David they have plenty of trees...